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(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
TEMPEST-DRIVEN
TEMPEST-DRIVEN
A Romance.
BY
RICHARD DOWLING,
AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD," "THE WEIRD SISTERS,"
"THE SPORT OF FATE," "UNDER ST. PAUL'S," "THE DUKE'S SWEETHEART,"
"SWEET INISFAIL," "THE HIDDEN FLAME," ETC.
_IN THREE VOLUMES_.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8 CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1886.
[_All rights reserved_.]
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PLACE PRESS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AFTER TEN YEARS.
CHAPTER XIX.
SEEING NOT BELIEVING.
CHAPTER XX.
TOLD BY GORMAN.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SEA.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ROCK.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE HOME OF THE MONSTER.
CHAPTER XXIV.
KILCASH.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE "BLUE ANCHOR."
CHAPTER XXVI.
ON THE CLIFF.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MONSTER LET LOOSE.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A NIGHT TRAVELLER.
CHAPTER XXIX.
DULWICH AGAIN.
CHAPTER XXX.
ANOTHER VISITOR.
CHAPTER XXXI.
"I HAVE BEEN ALWAYS ALONE."
TEMPEST-TOSSED.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AFTER TEN YEARS.
Jerry O'Brien's words had been no sooner uttered than he saw how
foolishly injudicious they were. In the excitement of the moment he
had forgotten what ought to have been uppermost in his thoughts--the
condition of his friend.
He rang the bell. In a few seconds Madge entered the room. He briefly
explained what had occurred, and then set off to summon Dr. Santley.
The doctor looked grave, and hurried back to Carlingford House. Here
he stayed an hour, and left with gloomy looks and words. A relapse was
possible, and a great delay to convalescence certain. There was
danger, serious danger of the patient's life.
Jerry O'Brien was in despair. He had the greatest affection for
Alfred, and he was in love with Alfred's sister. Yes, he might as well
confess the matter boldly to himself; plain-looking, gentle, cheerful
Madge was worth more to him than all the rest of the girls in the
world put together. And here his impetuous rashness had brought her
brother to death's door. Curses on his rashness!
Santley said he was by no means to see Alfred again that day, or until
he got formal leave to do so. He would give no opinion as
to the ultimate course of the disease; but there was cause for
anxiety--great anxiety.
Jerry took his leave of the house with a heavy heart. He was quite
alone in the world, and since he lost his mother, now years ago, he
had known no trouble so trying as this. He told himself over and over
again that all would yet be well with Alfred. In vain! His heart would
not be comforted; his mind would not abide in peace.
When he got into town, he did not know where to turn. The idea of
going to the club under the unpleasant circumstances was out of the
question. Walking about alone was dull work. He did not care to call
on any friend, and the notion of spending the evening at a place of
entertainment was simply monstrous. There seemed to be nothing else
for it but to go home, and that was a stupid programme enough.
Jerry had lodgings in Cecil Street, Strand, and thither he went. He
let himself in with a latchkey, and walked upstairs in the gathering
gloom of a late February afternoon. His rooms were on the second
floor. He entered the one looking out on the street, and lit the lamp
deliberately. There were two reasons for his proceeding slowly. In the
first place, it was not yet quite dark; in the second, deliberation
killed time, and he had nothing to do between that hour and to-morrow
morning, when he should call to know how Alfred was.
"Killing time," he thought, "is, when one is anxious, an excellent
though slow way of killing one's self."
He pulled down the blinds, drew the curtains, and roused up the
smouldering fire; then, with a heavy sigh, he threw himself into an
easy-chair, and looked indolently, discontentedly around.
The room at best was not very cheering or elegant. The house was old,
the room low, the furniture heavy, by no means fresh, and far from
new. The table on which the lamp stood had a staring crimson cover.
This was a recent and outrageous addition to the chromatic elements of
the place. Until that afternoon the cover had been of a dim, nameless
green, quite inoffensive, except for motley stains.
In his present state of mind, this cover felt like an insult, and he
rose quickly, and, having lifted the lamp, flung the obnoxious cover
into a corner, and was about to sit down again, when his eyes caught
sight of a letter lying on the carpet at his feet.
He stooped and picked it up.
"A letter from O'Hanlon, and a fat letter, too! What can it be, now?
Nothing more about those weirs and the commissioners, I hope. Well,
even the weirs and the commissioners in moderation would be better
than dwelling on this wretched business about poor Alfred."
He broke the cover, sat down, and began to read a long and
closely-written letter in a clerks hand. It was signed in a different
hand "John O'Hanlon," and from a printed chaplet in the corner it
appeared John O'Hanlon was a solicitor residing at Kilbarry.
Jerry O'Brien read on resolutely. The only sign he gave of
perturbation while mastering the eight pages he held in his hand was
now and then crossing, uncrossing, and recrossing his legs. When he
came to the end he threw the letter from him with an exclamation of
annoyance and disgust. Then he sat awhile motionless, with his elbow
resting on the table, his cheek on his hand, and his eyebrows drawn
low down over his eyes. At last he muttered:
"It is my unfortunate weirs again--or, rather, it is the weirs of
unfortunate me. They'll end by tearing up my weirs and leaving me to
graze on the parish. I'll make a nice pauper--splendid! I don't think
paupers have numbers like convicts; but if they have, I shall be
number naught, naught, naught recurring. Confound those commissioners
eternally! Obstruct the navigation of the Bawn! My salmon weirs
obstruct as much the navigation of the Bawn as they do of the
Euphrates or the Mississippi! If I had my will, these infernal,
meddling commissioners would be drowned first in the Euphrates and
then in the Mississippi, after which I'd give them a roasting alive in
Vesuvius for a change. This will take eight hundred a year out of my
pocket, and hand it over to--the Atlantic, and parts adjacent! That's
a nice way to help a struggling country!"
He paused for a while, and began walking up and down the room hastily,
angrily. Presently his thoughts took another turn.
"It's fortunate I said nothing to Madge. She must know by this time
how I feel towards her, and I don't think her people would have any
objection if this infernal affair was not hanging over me. But I could
not speak to her father if I had to say: 'Will you, sir, be good
enough to bring your daughter over to Kilbarry, and see her married to
me in the poor-house?' It would not look swell. Not a bit of it! Why,
'twould look quite squalid and ungenteel. Never mind, Madge. I'll
fight them, darling, to the last. I won't leave a stone unturned, and
every one I turn I'll fling at these rapacious fools."
He paused in his walk at the table.
He took up the letter again and looked at the end of it.
"He says I must go over at once--that I must start to-night. That's
peremptory and but short notice. Never mind; it may be all for the
best. I know the people at Dulwich will not think I am running away
from them after bringing this fresh trouble upon them. They are the
most generous people in the world. My honour is perfectly safe with
them. I have plenty of time to catch the mail. This letter must have
come at noon, and fallen off the table. I'll write a letter to
Carlingford House explaining matters, and then when I have packed a
portmanteau I shall be all right for the road." He sang in a low
voice:
"With my pistols cocked, and a kind good-night,
Then hurrah, hurrah for the road!"
Adding: "I wish to heavens the days were not gone for 'pistols cocked'
and 'the road.' Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bag
these accursed commissioners on the road, or in the water, or on the
wing. Unfortunately, 'old times are changed, old manners gone,' as the
poet says, and shooting even ruffianly commissioners is against the
law of the land, or the sea, or the air."
He got writing materials, gave Mr. Paulton a short account of the
reason for his unexpected departure from London; then he ordered his
dinner, packed his portmanteau, ate his dinner, and caught the mail
train for Holyhead easily.
He slept half the way from Euston to Holyhead, and nearly all the way
from Holyhead to Kingstown. In Dublin, at an hotel close to the
Westland Row Station, he got his breakfast, and then drove to
Kingsbridge, where he booked and took train for Kilbarry, an important
town in the south of Ireland.
A railway journey in the early part of the year from Dublin to the
south of Ireland is far from exhilarating. Half the way may be
performed at a fair, but the second half is done at a funereal pace.
The country looks damp, and is ill-clad with trees. It has not yet
donned its summer vesture of astonishing green. The towns are small,
far apart, and generally invisible from the train. Few people are on
the platforms, and the stations of even important towns are paltry and
forlorn. There are occasionally lovely mountains and pastoral streams,
but the whole effect is dulling, depressing, from the absence of trees
and the melancholy thinness of the population. It is a country empty
of its children, and desolate at the loss of them.
Jerry O'Brien was of a mercurial nature, and when he was down he was
at zero, and when up, at boiling. This last stage of his journey
plunged him into the profoundest gloom. Overhead there was a sick,
watery sun, which gave a feeble white glare more dejecting than a pall
of thunder cloud. Tobacco was powerless to ameliorate the chill
influence of that changing landscape. He tried to read a newspaper,
but found he could not fix his attention on one word of what he read.
After ascertaining there was nothing in it about Fishery
Commissioners, he gave it up as a bad job, and laid it with
resignation on the rug which covered his knees.
When he arrived at Kilbarry he was in the lowest and most desponding
state of mind. He was firmly persuaded that nothing could save his
weirs, and was almost convinced that the first news he should hear was
that his weirs had been destroyed, and that the commissioners had
resolved to lynch him if they could lay hands on him before he died of
hunger.
He left the station in an omnibus and drove along the mile of broad
quays beside the noble river Bawn to the "Munster Hotel." Here the
prospect was more cheering than on the bleak, cold journey down. The
river was thick with shipping; the quays noisy with traffic; the
stores, warehouses, wharfs, and shops alive with people. Sailing
vessels were discharging corn and coal, and steamers taking in cattle,
and cases of eggs, and bales of bacon, and firkins of butter. Here the
stream of humanity was vivid and strong. Moderate prosperity asserted
its presence blithely. The weather had cleared and brightened, and the
sun hung in the clear western air, a pale golden shield of light.
O'Brien was well known at "The Munster," and as he went up the steps
of the hotel, was greeted cordially by the cheerful landlord and a few
loungers with whom he was acquainted. He did not see a trace of the
hated Fishery Commissioners, and by the time he had eaten a light
luncheon, he began to think they were little more than an amiable
fiction of a jovial Government. No one he met seemed to think his
fortunes were in peril. The manners of John, the old waiter, were
respectful and joyous as though the traveller had just returned from
far distant lands, after an absence of many years, to enter into
possession of a princely patrimony.
There was no time to be lost if he wanted to catch his solicitor,
O'Hanlon, at the office. Accordingly he set off at once in that
direction, and, having gone through two or three streets, found
himself in the presence of his legal adviser, agent, and friend all in
one.
John O'Hanlon was a man past middle life, tall, a little stooped in
the shoulders, black-haired, neither fat nor lean, dark, ruddy, with
whiskers just tinged with gray, loud-voiced, and aggressive in manner,
and owning a pair of enormous brown hands. One of the peculiarities of
O'Hanlon was that no matter how well prepared he might be for the
advent of any one who came to him he was always at that moment busy,
or about to be busy, with something or somebody else.
As the young man entered the private office of the solicitor the
latter rose hastily, pointed to a chair, and said rapidly:
"A minute, O'Brien--a minute. Sit down. I want to tell Gorman
something."
Gorman was the head clerk--a red-haired, restless little man, who was
always to be found in the front office, and who never seemed to
have anything more important to do than lean against the folded
window-shutter and look out into the street, but who was reputed to
be more wily than any two fully sworn-in attorneys in Kilbarry.
After a short absence, O'Hanlon came back.
"My dear O'Brien, I'm delighted to see you."
He took both his client's hands, and shook them most cordially. He had
the reputation of being the most insincere man you could meet on a
summer's day; but no one had ever been able to point out any one act
of insincerity in his conduct.
"I got your letter," said O'Brien, after replying to the greetings of
the other, "and here I am. I came post-haste."
"Right, right, my boy! Those rascally commissioners will be the death
of me. They'll be the death of every man in the neighbourhood who
takes an interest in salmon, except the net men."
"Well, what is it this time? The same old story, as well as I could
gather from your letter."
"The same old story over again. The same old three-and-fourpence--(a
professional sum, which, I am sorry to see, has grown into a saying,
although a colourless and unmeaning saying). The facts are these."
Here the solicitor gave a long and energetic account of the vile
proceedings of these rascally commissioners, and wound up by saying
that they hadn't a leg to stand on, and that "we" were sure to win in
the long run, but that to insure success it was absolutely necessary
for O'Brien to be in town or within very easy call for a month or two,
as petitions and declarations and so-ons had to be considered, drawn
up, and attended to generally and particularly.
When Jerry heard the whole state of affairs, he felt considerably
relieved on the score of his salmon weirs on the lower Bawn. Upon
telling this to his friend, the latter became hilarious, slapped Jerry
on the back, and said that he'd prove the commissioners were the
greatest fools in Ireland, and, moreover, make them confess it
themselves in their own little dirty hole-and-corner court.
These and other gallant words and brave assurances served to put Jerry
in good spirits, and when he rose to leave he was as buoyant as though
he already held the proofs of triumph in his hand.
As he was about to quit the office, O'Hanlon took him by the hand, and
mysteriously said:
"You were in London while that Davenport inquest was going on?"
"Yes."
"Do you know anything about it?"
O'Brien's good spirits instantly took flight.
"Too much! I know everything about it."
"You read a good report of the inquest?"
"No; I was at the inquest."
"Ah-h!" It was a long-drawn, deep breath. The eyes of the solicitor
became suddenly introspective, and he lolled his head over his right
shoulder as if in deep thought. "Why did you attend that inquest?"
"Well, for two reasons. First, I, as you of course know, was
acquainted with the Davenports; and second, because the dearest friend
I have in London was greatly interested in Mrs. Davenport. It's a long
story."
"Is it? Ah-h! I am greatly interested in that story too."
"Are you? Why? I didn't think you knew the Davenports."
The solicitor straightened his head on his shoulders. His eyes were
still turned inward.
"You are right so far. I did not know the Davenports. But do you
remember a client of mine named Michael Fahey--commonly called Mike
Fahey!"
"Let me see. That's a good while ago?"
"Ten or eleven years ago," said the solicitor, shaking his head in
accord with his private thoughts rather than with his words.
"I do. He was drowned near Kilcash, wasn't he?"
"At the Black Rock."
"An awful death. I never think of any one being drowned there without
shuddering. Wasn't there something wrong with that man--that client of
yours?"
"Yes. The police were after him."
"Why do you speak of him now?"
"Don't you remember that when seen by the police who were in chase he
was in the neighbourhood of Davenport's house, and that he ran like a
madman until he got to the Black Rock, and then threw himself in?"
"Yes; it makes my flesh creep," said O'Brien, with a shiver.
"He left some documents in my possession. They are in my possession
yet. They show he had some connection with Davenport. I had forgotten
all about it until----"
The solicitor paused, and suddenly the eyes, which had been so long
turned inward, flashed out their light, and blazed into those of the
young man standing opposite.
O'Brien started back in vague dread.
"Until when?" he asked, in a low, constrained voice.
"Until this day week."
"And then"--O'Hanlon's eyes dilated--"I saw----"
"In the name of Heaven, what?"
"His ghost."